Paul,

thanks once more for your review of H.235V3. You may find my answers in the usual style in-lined below.

With kind regards

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-----Original Message----- From: Paul Long [mailto:plong@PACKETIZER.COM] Sent: Monday, September 09, 2002 5:25 PM To: ITU-SG16@echo.jf.INTEL.COM Subject: Encrypting session key

H.235 says, "The session key encryption algorithm is the same as the negotiated media encryption algorithm." At the very least, this of course means that one uses the same cipher; however, there are some important details that this statement overlooks, i.e., mode, IV, salt, and padding. I assume that the guiding principle is to treat the ASN.1 encoded value as much like an RTP payload as possible.

MEU:> I'm not certain if that is really a non-stated principle in this case.

Mode Does one use the same mode as media and therefore the same block processing for each successive block in the encoded ASN.1 value?

MEU:> Yes, that is the intention. See for example the statement in H.235V3 section 8.6.1 "The negotiated encryption algorithms and their modes of operation for the media stream encryption will be used also for secure distribution of the session key. The encryption algorithm for encryption of the media key shall operate in the same chaining mode as the media encryption algorithm".

IV For H.235v3, one clearly uses the IV specified in the new type, NewKeySyncMaterial.paramS. MEU:> That's correct.

However, what does one do for v2? There doesn't seem to be any way to specify the IV for session-key encryption.

MEU:> Don't be afraid that you can't find a direct counterpart for NewKeySyncMaterial.paramS in version 2. H.235 Version2 works slightly differently, namely: H235Key.sharedSecret carries the params as part of the ENCRYPTED{} operation/macro; see also section D.7.2. I would like to note that I should add some text in that section, that describes the v3 NewKeySyncMaterial fields; to be completed....

I suppose one could derive it from the session key similar to how SRTP derives stuff from the master key. For example, IV = session key. Maybe this should go in the IG.

MEU:> No, no, no. This has nothing to do with SRTP. We are considering key management here. Everything should be there for signalling the IV.

Salt This is a tough one. One could have used the same salt being signaled for media, but it is of course encrypted! Therefore, if the mode for encrypting media is EOFB, which uses a salt value, and one is supposed to use the same "encryption algorithm" for encrypting the session key as encrypting media, what salt value does one use? An implied salt value of all zeros would work, but this is not written down anywhere.

MEU:>

Paul, your observation is true. At present, v3 provides just a salt for the media part, but does say anything about a salt for the purpose of key distribution. This should indeed be clarified in H.235v3.

My proposal is just as simple, namely to state that a "NULL salting key" (i.e. no salting key effectively) shall be used for encryption of the session key and for encryption of the salting key. Thus, with the "NULL salting key" that does not get signaled, the EOFB mode becomes actually the standard OFB mode.

This is possible when assuming or ensuring that the session key and the (media) salting key are random; then the ciphertexts are not susceptible to known-plaintext attacks anyway.

NewKeySyncMaterial ::= SEQUENCE { generalID Identifier, -- peer terminal ID algorithmOID OBJECT IDENTIFIER, -- encryption algorithm paramS Params, -- IV encryptedSessionKey OCTET STRING, -- encrypted session key encryptedSaltingKey OCTET STRING OPTIONAL, -- encrypted salting key for media ... }

Notes:

The session key distribution/key update protocol for the EOFB mode would look like

A->B: IDa, IV, ENC_MK,IV,0(K), ENC_MK,IV,0(KS).

Where IDa is the generalID of the source, IV is the initial value/vector ENC_M,I,0(K) mean EOFB encryption of plaintext K using key M, initial value/vector I and a NULL salting key. KS is the salting key for the media K is plaintext session key.

If felt useful, I would like to add such a diagram to H.235v3.

Padding This is the toughest to translate from media to session-key encryption. This is the overall H.235 statement as to what kind of padding to perform on media: "Two methods are available to handle packets whose payload is not a multiple of blocks: 1) Ciphertext Stealing for ECB and CBC; Zero pad for CFB and EOFB. 2) Padding in the manner prescribed by [RTP] (Section 5.1)." Since a session key isn't an RTP packet, we can eliminate #2. Therefore, #1 says to use zero padding for EOFB and ciphertext stealing for CBC. Is that how we handle padding when encrypting the session key?

MEU:> I guess that your issue mostly is due to some missing information (that might be stated somewhere in the text, if you want). For DES and AES128 there is no need for padding as the key always fits into one or a few blocks.

Paul

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